The Host Unknown Podcast

By: Host Unknown Thom Langford Andrew Agnes Javvad Malik
  • Summary

  • Host Unknown is the unholy alliance of the old, the new and the rockstars of the infosec industry in an internet-based show that tries to care about issues in our industry. It regularly fails. With presenters that have an inflated opinion of their own worth and a production team with a pathological dislike of them (or “meat puppets” as it often refers to them), it is with a combination of luck and utter lack of good judgement that a show is ever produced and released. Host Unknown is available for sponsorship, conferences, other web shows or indeed anything that pays a little bit of money to keep the debt collectors away. You can contact them at contact@hostunknown.tv for details
    All rights reserved - Hands Off!
    Show more Show less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • Episode 205 The Stone Cold Episode
    Oct 14 2024
    This week in InfoSec (08:29)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield10th October 1995: Netscape introduced the "Netscape Bugs Bounty", a program rewarding users who report "bugs" in the beta versions of its recently announced Netscape Navigator 2.0 web browser.Navigator was the dominant browser from 1995-1998, when it was overtaken by Internet Explorer.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/18444662777185566838th October 2008: University student David Kernell was arraigned. He compromised the Yahoo! email account of US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, using public info to reset her password, posting her emails to 4chan. He was later found guilty and died from MS complications in 2018.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1843619068302983592 Rant of the Week (20:24) Cards Against Humanity campaigns to encourage voting, expose personal data abuseUp to $100 for planning to vote and a public smear – how is this not illegal?The troublemakers behind the party game Cards Against Humanity have launched a campaign demonstrating how easy it is to buy sensitive personal data about American voters, while simultaneously encouraging those Americans to plan how to cast a vote in the upcoming presidential election.The "Cards Against Humanity Pays You to Give a Shit" campaign uses US citizens' personal data obtained from a broker to identify whether individuals voted in the 2020 US presidential election and how they lean politically. Those who didn't vote are asked to put info into the website, promise to vote in the upcoming election, make a voting plan, "and publicly post 'Donald Trump is a human toilet'" in exchange for up to $100. Billy Big Balls of the Week (28:42)FBI created a cryptocurrency so it could watch it being abusedThe FBI created its own cryptocurrency so it could watch suspected fraudsters use it – an idea that worked so well it produced arrests in three countriesNews of the Feds' currency, an Ethereum-based instrument named NexFundAI, appeared in a Wednesday Department of Justice announcement that eighteen individuals have been charged "for widespread fraud and manipulation in the cryptocurrency markets."The Feds allege some of the fraud involved "wash trades" – transactions conducted solely to increase the volume of trades in a security or other asset. Rising volumes of trades are often seen as an indicator that a stock is of increasing interest as it has good growth prospects – a signal that can see prices rise. But wash trades are often conducted by related entities, or even the same entity, to create a false market signal – an arrangement also known as "pump and dump." Industry News (34:36) New EU Body to Centralize Complaints Against Facebook, TikTok, YouTubeNew Generation of Malicious QR Codes Uncovered by ResearchersApple’s iPhone Mirroring Flaw Exposes Employee Privacy RisksFormer RAC Employees Get Suspended Sentence for Data TheftInternet Archive Breached, 31 Million Records ExposedMarriott Agrees $52m Settlement for Massive Data BreachEU Adopts Cyber Resilience Act for Connected DevicesOver 10m Conversations Exposed in AI Call Center HackDisinformation Campaign Targets Moldova Ahead of EU Referendum Tweet of the Week (45:07)https://twitter.com/JackRhysider/status/1844502566799085769 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!
    Show more Show less
    51 mins
  • Episode 204 - The Umms and Ahhs Episode
    Oct 7 2024

    This week in InfoSec (10:01)

    With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

    27th September 2001: Jan de Wit was sentenced to 150 hours of community service in the Netherlands for creating and spreading the Anna Kournikova virus. It was one of the first of the major viruses created from a virus toolkit - the dawn of cybercrime toolkits.

    https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1839709145282277614

    3rd October 2017: A week after he retired as the result of Equifax's data breach, former CEO Richard F. Smith told members of Congress that one person in the IT department was at fault.

    https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1841893372035838342

    Rant of the Week (14:52)

    It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

    Because they're most likely to share crappy misinformation online

    Since Elon Musk bought Twitter nearly two years ago – a $44 billion acquisition he tried to pull out of – the mogul has driven a narrative that moderation of the microblogging website disproportionately targeted conservatives, libertarians, and Trump supporters.

    A scientific paper published in the journal Nature this week confirms that was the case, with justification. The groups more likely to be subjected to moderation were also more likely to share misinformation from low-quality news sites.

    Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:49)

    Use this link to read the story: https://www.404media.co/email/e7ecda94-675a-4538-901f-b2ccb35fe916/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter - the other link below for the show notes (the one above is tied to my account)

    Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers

    A pair of students at Harvard have built what big tech companies refused to release publicly due to the overwhelming risks and danger involved: smart glasses with facial recognition technology that automatically looks up someone’s face and identifies them. The students have gone a step further too. Their customized glasses also pull other information about their subject from around the web, including their home address, phone number, and family members.

    Industry News (32:05)

    PwC Urges Boards to Give CISOs a Seat at the Table

    Cyber-Attacks Hit Over a Third of English Schools

    ISACA: European Security Teams Are Understaffed and Underfunded

    T-Mobile to Pay $15.75m Penalty for Multiple Data Breaches

    British Hacker Charged in the US For $3.75m Insider Trading Scheme

    Meta Teams Up with Banks to Target Fraudsters

    FIN7 Gang Hides Malware in AI “Deepnude” Sites

    Northern Ireland Police Data Leak Sees Service Fined by ICO

    Microsoft and US Government Disrupt Russian Star Blizzard Operations

    Tweet of the Week (38:52)

    https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/1842097858196979989

    Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

    Show more Show less
    42 mins
  • Episode 203 - The Too Soon Episode
    Sep 24 2024
    This week in InfoSec (10:44)With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield18th September 2001: The Nimda worm was released. Utilising 5 different infection vectors, it became the most widespread virus/worm after only 22 minutes.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1836495262409175187 17th September 2014: Apple announced that the iOS 8 operating system (used on iPhone and iPad) would be architected to prevent it from being technically feasible for the company to extract data from customer devices. A day later Google made a similar announcement pertaining to Android.With iOS 8 Update, Apple Will No Longer Provide User Data to Policehttps://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1836071319030374437 Rant of the Week (17:50)No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedomBuried beneath the endless feeds and attention-grabbing videos of the modern internet is a network of data harvesting and sale that's perhaps far more vast than most people realise, and it desperately needs regulation. That's the conclusion the FTC made after spending nearly four years poring over internal data from nine major social media and video streaming corporations in the US.These internet behemoths are collecting vast amounts of data, both on and off their services, and the handling of such data is "woefully inadequate," particularly around data belonging to children and teenagers, the FTC said. Billy Big Balls of the Week (28:06)LinkedIn started harvesting people's posts for training AI without asking for opt-inLinkedIn started harvesting user-generated content to train its AI without asking for permission, angering netizens.Microsoft’s self-help network on Wednesday published a "trust and safety" update in which senior veep and general counsel Blake Lawit revealed LinkedIn's use of people's posts and other data for both training and using its generative AI features.In doing so, he said the site's privacy policy had been updated. We note this policy links to an FAQ that was updated sometime last week also confirming the automatic collecting of posts for training – meaning it appears LinkedIn started gathering up content for its AI models, and opting in users, well before Lawit’s post and the updated privacy policy advised of the changes today. Industry News (35:07) Over Half of Breached UK Firms Pay RansomICO Acts Against Sky Betting and Gaming Over CookiesAT&T Agrees $13m FCC Settlement Over Cloud Data BreachEuropol Taskforce Disrupts Global Criminal Network Through Supply Chain AttackGoogle Street View Images Used For Extortion Scams8000 Claimants Sue Outsourcing Giant Capita Over 2023 Data BreachWestern Agencies Warn Risk from Chinese-Controlled BotnetGoing for Gold: HSBC Approves Quantum-Safe Technology for Tokenized BullionsCybersecurity Skills Gap Leaves Cloud Environments Vulnerable Tweet of the Week (42:39)https://twitter.com/ProfWoodward/status/1837084678836171089 Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!
    Show more Show less
    47 mins

What listeners say about The Host Unknown Podcast

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.